Undernews For April 28, 2008

Beyond the Euphrates began
for us the land of mirage and danger, the sands where one
helplessly sank, and the roads which ended in nothing. The
slightest reversal would have resulted in a jolt to our
prestige giving rise to all kinds of catastrophe; the
problem was not only to conquer but to conquer again and
again, perpetually; our forces would be drained off in the
attempt. - Emperor Hadrian AD 117-138PAGE
ONE MUST

WILL YOUR CANDIDATE SUPPORT
BIDETS?

TREE HUGGER - Bidets [are] a key
green technology, because they eliminate the use of toilet
paper. They also provide important health benefits. These
include increased cleanliness, and the therapeutic effect of
water on damaged skin (think rashes or hemorrhoids).

We
use 36.5 billions rolls of toilet paper in the U.S. each
year, this represents at least 15 million trees pulped. This
also involves 473,587,500,000 gallons of water to produce
the paper and 253,000 tons of chlorine for bleaching
purposes. The manufacturing process requires about 17.3
terawatts of electricity annually. Also, there is the energy
and materials involved in packaging and transporting the
toilet paper to households across the country.

Toilet
paper also constitutes a significant load on the city sewer
systems, and water treatment plants. It is also often
responsible for clogged pipes. In septic systems, the
elimination of toilet paper would mean the septic tank would
need to be emptied much less often.

Basically, the huge
industry of producing toilet paper could be eliminated
through the use of bidets. Instead of using toilet paper, a
bidet cleans your posterior using a jet of water. Some
bidets also provide an air-drying mechanism.

In Japan,
high-tech bidets called Washlets are now the most popular
electronic equipment being sold -- 60% of households have
them installed. In Venezuela they are found in approximately
90% of households.

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT DEFENDS WAR
CRIMES BY CIA

MSNBC - Recent letters from the U.S.
Justice Department to Congress state that intelligence
agents working on counterterrorism can legally use
interrogation techniques that might otherwise be banned by
international law, The New York Times reported in its Sunday
editions. The Justice Department's interpretation shows the
Bush administration is contending that the boundaries should
have a degree of latitude, the Times said, despite the
president's order last summer that he said meant the CIA
would hew to international norms on the treatment of
detainees. . .

A March 5 letter from the Justice
Department to Congress makes clear the Bush administration
has not set boundaries for which interrogation methods might
violate the ban in the Geneva Conventions on "outrages upon
personal dignity," the Times reported.

"The fact that an
act is undertaken to prevent a threatened terrorist attack,
rather than for the purpose of humiliation or abuse, would
be relevant to a reasonable observer in measuring the
outrageousness of the act," Brian Benczkowski, a deputy
assistant attorney general, wrote in one letter.

The Times
said the letters were provided by the staff of Sen. Ron
Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and member of the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence.

A senior Justice Department
official, speaking to the Times on condition of anonymity,
said of the classified information: "I certainly don't want
to suggest that if there's a good purpose you can head off
and humiliate someone." But he said "the fact that you are
doing something for a legitimate security purpose would be
relevant." "There are certainly things that can be insulting
that would not raise to the level of an outrage on personal
dignity," the official said.

MONSANTO GOES AFTER
FARMERS FOR ACTING LIKE FARMERS

DONALD L. BARLETT AND JAMES B. STEELE,
VANITY FAIR - As interviews and reams of court
documents reveal, Monsanto relies on a shadowy army of
private investigators and agents in the American heartland
to strike fear into farm country. They fan out into fields
and farm towns, where they secretly videotape and photograph
farmers, store owners, and co-ops; infiltrate community
meetings; and gather information from informants about
farming activities. Farmers say that some Monsanto agents
pretend to be surveyors. Others confront farmers on their
land and try to pressure them to sign papers giving Monsanto
access to their private records. Farmers call them the "seed
police" and use words such as "Gestapo" and "Mafia" to
describe their tactics.

When asked about these practices,
Monsanto declined to comment specifically, other than to say
that the company is simply protecting its patents. "Monsanto
spends more than $2 million a day in research to identify,
test, develop and bring to market innovative new seeds and
technologies that benefit farmers," Monsanto spokesman
Darren Wallis wrote in an e-mailed letter to Vanity Fair.
"One tool in protecting this investment is patenting our
discoveries and, if necessary, legally defending those
patents against those who might choose to infringe upon
them." Wallis said that, while the vast majority of farmers
and seed dealers follow the licensing agreements, "a tiny
fraction" do not, and that Monsanto is obligated to those
who do abide by its rules to enforce its patent rights on
those who "reap the benefits of the technology without
paying for its use." He said only a small number of cases
ever go to trial.

Some compare Monsanto's hard-line
approach to Microsoft's zealous efforts to protect its
software from pirates. At least with Microsoft the buyer of
a program can use it over and over again. But farmers who
buy Monsanto's seeds can't even do that.

For
centuries-millennia-farmers have saved seeds from season to
season: they planted in the spring, harvested in the fall,
then reclaimed and cleaned the seeds over the winter for
re-planting the next spring. Monsanto has turned this
ancient practice on its head.

Monsanto developed G.M.
seeds that would resist its own herbicide, Roundup, offering
farmers a convenient way to spray fields with weed killer
without affecting crops. Monsanto then patented the seeds.
For nearly all of its history the United States Patent and
Trademark Office had refused to grant patents on seeds,
viewing them as life-forms with too many variables to be
patented. "It's not like describing a widget," says Joseph
Mendelson III, the legal director of the Center for Food
Safety, which has tracked Monsanto's activities in rural
America for years.

Indeed not. But in 1980 the U.S.
Supreme Court, in a five-to-four decision, turned seeds into
widgets, laying the groundwork for a handful of corporations
to begin taking control of the world's food supply. In its
decision, the court extended patent law to cover "a live
human-made microorganism." In this case, the organism wasn't
even a seed. Rather, it was a Pseudomonas bacterium
developed by a General Electric scientist to clean up oil
spills. But the precedent was set, and Monsanto took
advantage of it. Since the 1980s, Monsanto has become the
world leader in genetic modification of seeds and has won
674 biotechnology patents, more than any other company,
according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

Farmers
who buy Monsanto's patented Roundup Ready seeds are required
to sign an agreement promising not to save the seed produced
after each harvest for re-planting, or to sell the seed to
other farmers. This means that farmers must buy new seed
every year. Those increased sales, coupled with ballooning
sales of its Roundup weed killer, have been a bonanza for
Monsanto.

TOP AIDE TO COLIN POWELL RAISES WAR CRIME
QUESTION RE CHENEY

BBC - A top aide to former Secretary
of State Colin Powell has launched a stinging attack on US
Vice-President Dick Cheney over abuse of prisoners by US
troops. Col Lawrence Wilkerson accused Mr Cheney of ignoring
a decision by President Bush on the treatment of prisoners
in the war on terror.

Asked by the BBC's Today if Mr
Cheney could be accused of war crimes, he said: "It's an
interesting question."

"Certainly it is a domestic crime
to advocate terror," he added.

"And I would suspect, for
whatever it's worth, it's an international crime as
well."

This is an extraordinary attack by a man who until
earlier in the year was Mr Cheney's colleague in the senior
reaches of the Bush team, the BBC's Justin Webb in
Washington says.

Col Wilkerson has in the past accused the
vice-president of responsibility for the conditions which
led to the abuse of prisoners.

But this time he has gone
much further, appearing to suggest Mr Cheney should face war
crimes charges, our correspondent adds.

He said that there
were two sides of the debate within the Bush administration
over the treatment of prisoners.

Mr Powell and more dovish
members had argued for sticking to the Geneva conventions,
which prohibit the torture of detainees.

Meanwhile, the
other side "essentially wanted to do away with all
restrictions".

Mr Bush agreed a compromise, that "Geneva
would in fact govern all but al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda
look-alike detainees". . . .

BLACK LIKE WHO?

Sam
Smith

Discussions of race and gender have
overwhelmed the presidential campaign - or national
conversation as the yammerers like to put it. But they show
little sign of helping people seeking the right choice of
candidate. One reason is quite simple. As the community
organizer Saul Alinsky explained once, "When the poor get
power, they'll be shits like everyone else." The same is
true of blacks, women and blind, dyslectic Latvians.

Thus,
being either ethnically prejudiced against a presidential
candidate or enthused because of that candidate's genome
misses the point. It is power itself that more likely calls
the shot.

For example, in my home town of Washington DC,
over the past decade two black Democratic mayors, with the
help of Democratic black and women city council members,
have:

Closed the city's public hospital

Torn down much of the city's public housing

Emasculated the elected school board and turned much of
the public school system over to private charter schools.

Encouraged in numerous ways the socio-economic
cleansing of the city and its neighborhoods.

Outsourced its prisoners to the federal system, meaning
that nonviolent inmates may be thousands of miles away from
home and relatives.

Disrupted a taxi cab system
which was the largest per capita in the country and the only
major one in which a majority of drivers owned their cabs.

It is true that some of these efforts were enabled
by a federal takeover of the city in the 1990s backed by a
white president name Clinton, but he had considerable help
from our black female non-voting delegate in Congress and
his own black budget and management aide, Franklin Raines.

Raines, the son of Seattle janitors, went to Harvard
College, Harvard Law and to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He
recently agreed to pay $24.7 million to escape further
actions over his misdeeds as vice chair of Fannie Mae two
years after a federal suit had been filed against him to
recover some or all of $50 million he received thanks to
accounting "errors" that vastly increased bonuses for top
executives like him. To get some idea of how much this is,
consider that Wesley Snipes is headed for a three year jail
term for the accounting error of not filing personal income
taxes that involved about 7% of the amount in the Raines
case. So even among the powerful there are gradations.

The reason the Washington example is useful is because,
literally being a U.S. colony, it has a long history of
being the canary in the mine shaft of American politics,
both for the good and the bad. On the good side, for
example, Lincoln signed a DC Emancipation Act nine months
before the federal one. On the bad side, DC is used as a
dumping ground for crummy ideas that congress members can't
get approved in their own districts.

For some years now,
the story of Washington has been one of subtly brutal
treatment of its underclass. For example, despite an alleged
urban renaissance, from 1989 to 2006 the poverty rate
increased by one third - from 15% to 20% even as services
were declining.

In comparison, between 1980 and 1989 the
poverty rate actually fell 20%. The mayor was also black but
of a sort white liberals have no problem ridiculing: Marion
Barry. In fact, under Barry, conditions for lower income
residents, blacks, women and gays all improved despite his
drug habit. And while the Washington Post missed no
opportunity to trash Barry, to this day it covers for
Raines. Similarly, while blacks and whites working to save
basic services for the city's less wealthy wander in the
wilderness, the upscale crowd and the Post still backs Mayor
Fenty to the hilt.

So even among the powerful there are
gradations. Distinctions are easily made by white liberals
between a Barry and a Fenty, or a Jesse Jackson and Barack
Obama, but that is considered safe because they involve
class and style rather than ethnicity. Change the names to
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and you have a whole new
game.

Providing some scientific support for Lord Acton's
remark about the corruption of power, psychology professor
Dacher Keltner in the magazine Greater Good writes:

"Unfortunately,
this is not entirely a myth, as the actions of Europe's
monarchs, Enron's executives, and out-of-control pop stars
reveal. A great deal of research-especially from social
psychology-lends support to Acton's claim, albeit with a
twist: Power leads people to act in impulsive fashion, both
good and bad, and to fail to understand other people's
feelings and desires.

"For instance, studies have found
that people given power in experiments are more likely to
rely on stereotypes when judging others, and they pay less
attention to the characteristics that define those other
people as individuals. Predisposed to stereotype, they also
judge others' attitudes, interests, and needs less
accurately. One survey found that high-power professors made
less accurate judgments about the attitudes of low-power
professors than those low-power professors made about the
attitudes of their more powerful colleagues. . .

"A great
deal of research has also found that power encourages
individuals to act on their own whims, desires, and
impulses. When researchers give people power in scientific
experiments, those people are more likely to physically
touch others in potentially inappropriate ways, to flirt in
more direct fashion, to make risky choices and gambles, to
make first offers in negotiations, to speak their mind, and
to eat cookies like the Cookie Monster, with crumbs all over
their chins and chests.

"Perhaps more unsettling is the
wealth of evidence that having power makes people more
likely to act like sociopaths. High-power individuals are
more likely to interrupt others, to speak out of turn, and
to fail to look at others who are speaking. They are also
more likely to tease friends and colleagues in hostile,
humiliating fashion. Surveys of organizations find that most
rude behaviors-shouting, profanities, bald critiques-emanate
from the offices and cubicles of individuals in positions of
power. . .

"This leaves us with a power paradox. Power is
given to those individuals, groups, or nations who advance
the interests of the greater good in socially-intelligent
fashion. Yet unfortunately, having power renders many
individuals as impulsive and poorly attuned to others as
your garden variety frontal lobe patient, making them prone
to act abusively and lose the esteem of their peers. What
people want from leaders-social intelligence-is what is
damaged by the experience of power."

There are another
problems with harping on race and gender. For one thing,
favorable stereotypes about such topics are just as
discriminatory as unfavorable ones. Further, race is a
racist concept and doesn't exist as an objective fact. The
power of this concept, however, can be seen in that Obama is
almost universally considered black even though his mother
was considered white. No one on national TV dares talk about
why Obama is called black and not white or bicultural. And
while sex does have a physiological basis, what is being
discussed or hinted - namely the alleged distribution of
human virtue - is just as amorphous and unreliable.
Besides, in a truly non-racist, non-sexist society we
wouldn't be so obsessed with the subject.

On the other
hand, the question of how each candidate might handle power
is fascinating, important and underreported. Both Clinton
and McCain have had their sociopathic moments based on the
accounts of colleagues and staffers. The sort of anger and
threatening that each has displayed hardly recommends them
for the 3 a.m. watch. Obama seems to swing between being a
preacher or a professor, both roles tending to leave him
aloof from some of the audience he is trying to reach,
especially those who are culturally removed, whether by
education, ethnicity or class. But a more serious problem
may be that he will over-parse issues, thus producing
insignificant results, rather than that he will bully or
manipulate his way to his goal. In this way, he may be far
more accomplished on foreign policy disputes than on
domestic policy. He may be a new Jimmy Carter, who in the
end did better overseas than on Capitol Hill.

Obama may
also imitate Carter in being a transitional figure. The
Carter administration was a bridge over which America
crossed, leaving the New Deal and Great Society behind and
moving into the brutal capitalism of Reagan, Bush and
Clinton. Just as Carter's failure helped bring Reagan, so
Obama's weaknesses may help to revive progressive politics.

These are just guesses, but they raise a far more
important and useful topic than race or gender because, yes,
Hillary Clinton is a woman, but like who? And Obama is
considered black - but black like who? And we're not helping
either come up with the right answer by reducing the race
to a choice as puerile as selecting your favorite brand in a
supermarket aisle. Likewise the seeming indifference of
Democrats to what sort of black Obama would be or woman
Clinton would be.

In the end, it makes a lot more sense to
talk about real things, like who's going to end the war and
the recession, and who's going to end their administration
with honor. The danger, in the alternative, is to discover
too late that you bought what was on the outside of the box
and not what was actually in it.

THE DEMOCRATS'
PROBLEM

ROBERT D. STACEY CHARLOTTE OBSERVER -
The first Republican to win a presidential election was
Abraham Lincoln. Since that initial success, the GOP has won
23 presidential elections compared to just 14 for the
Democrats.

Since the Civil War only four Democrats --
Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson, Franklin Roosevelt and Samuel
Tilden -- have won a majority of the popular vote. (Tilden
in 1876, lost the Electoral College vote and never became
president.)

It has been 32 years since a Democrat won a
majority of the popular vote. The last to do so was Carter,
who won a whopping 50.1 percent of the votes in 1976. He
defeated Republican incumbent Gerald Ford, the man who
pardoned Richard Nixon and carried the burden of Watergate
and the Vietnam War into the election. . .

Like the 1976
contest, all conditions point toward an easy Democratic
victory this November. George W. Bush, the Republican
incumbent, suffers from abysmal approval ratings -- below 30
percent in some polls. The economy is weak and appears to be
entering a recession. And the presumptive Republican
nominee, John McCain, while certainly something of a
maverick, is quite close to the president on the one issue
causing him the most damage -- the war in Iraq.

Yet right
now in a hypothetical head-to-head match-up, McCain and
Obama appear to be in a dead . . . The fact is Democrats
historically have struggled to win the White House and have
found ways to lose contests that presumably they should have
won. Since Lincoln, Americans have tended to see the
presidency as primarily a Republican institution. It's not
that Democrats cannot win, but they seem to have more
negative voter assumptions to overcome.

RICH LOWRY, NATIONAL REVIEWDemocrats lost the past two presidential elections by
nominating candidates who had trouble connecting with
down-scale white voters. They are about to do the same, but
with their eyes wide open. . . Hillary Clinton, whose sense
of entitlement, nonexistent common touch, and dubious
credibility throwing back boilermakers hardly make her a
natural populist. But Obama has transformed her into one.
Obama has won the white vote only in seven states. He lost
whites without a college degree even in his native Illinois.
Among traditional Democratic voters in Pennsylvania, Clinton
racked up numbers as if she had been running against an
obscure alderman instead of the most lavishly financed
primary candidate in America history. . . She won 70 percent
of non-college-educated whites, 59 percent of union members,
69 percent of Catholic voters, and won every income level
below $150,000.

PREPARATIONS UNDERWAY FOR WAR WITH
IRAN

DAN HAMBURG, SANTA MONICA MIRROR
George W. Bush is poised to order a massive aerial
bombardment - possibly including tactical nuclear weapons -
of up to 10,000 targets in Iran. The attack would be
justified on grounds that Iran is interfering with U.S.
efforts in Iraq and that Iran is developing a nuclear
weapon, a charge that was debunked last fall in the National
Intelligence Estimate.

According to international experts,
the U.S. declared economic war against Iran on March 20. On
that day, the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement
Network called on the world's financial institutions to stop
doing business with Iran, making it much more difficult for
Iran to engage in global commerce.

Now the Bush
administration is preparing to drop the other shoe. Below
are some of the indications that a U.S. military attack on
Iran is imminent:

- The March 11 resignation of CENTCOM
Commander Admiral William Fallon who, according to a
well-publicized Esquire magazine article, "openly opposed
Bush's Iran policy and was a lone voice against taking
military action to stop the Iranian nuclear program."-
The recent removal of Vice Admiral John Stufflebeem,
Commander of the 6th Fleet (Mediterranean Sea), also known
to be a critic of the administration's war plans.

- Two
U.S. warships took up positions off Lebanon last month.
According to US News & World Report, "The United States
would want its warships in the eastern Mediterranean in the
event of a military action against Iran."

- The United
States has two aircraft carrier strike groups (the USS John
C. Stennis and the USS Eisenhower) stationed in the Persian
Gulf with at least one additional group reportedly on the
way.

- The Israeli air strike against Syria last September
was advertised as an attack on a nuclear facility. Current
speculation is that the real purpose of the raid was to
"force Syria to switch on the targeting electronics for
newly received Russian anti-aircraft defenses." Knowing the
electronic signatures of these systems would reduce the
risks for U.S. and Israeli warplanes heading to Iranian
targets.

- Israel conducted its largest military exercises
ever beginning the week of April 6. This exercise simulated
missile strikes from Iran, Lebanon, and Syria. . .

- One
day after a March visit from Vice President Cheney, the
Saudi government announced "national plans to deal with any
sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the
kingdom." This announcement came following warnings of
possible attacks on Iran's nearby Bushehr nuclear
reactors.

- According to former U.N. chief weapons
inspector Scott Ritter, the Pentagon has contracted for
additional bunker-buster bombs and planes that carry them.
Delivery is due this month.

- The oncoming monsoon season,
which would carry radioactive fallout by wind and rain to
countries east of Iran (including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and
India), narrows the window for the optimal launch of an air
attack.

RAW STORYAdm. Michael Mullen,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the
Pentagon is planning "potential" military actions against
Iran, reports The Washington Post. Mullen criticized Iran's
"'increasingly lethal and malign influence' in Iraq," writes
Ann Scott Tyson for the Post.

Addressing concerns about
the US military's capability of dealing with yet another
conflict at a time when forces are purportedly stretched
thin, Mullen said war with Iran "would be 'extremely
stressing' but not impossible for U.S. forces, pointing
specifically to reserve capabilities in the Navy and Air
Force," Tyson notes.

"It would be a mistake to think that
we are out of combat capability," she quotes the U.S.'s top
military leader at a Pentagon news conference.

Mullen's
assertion comes a day after American forces reportedly fired
warning shots at Iranian speedboats in the Persian Gulf, a
confrontation that Iran denies took place.

A prior
incident involving U.S. forces in the Strait of Hormuz and
Iranian speedboats in January of this year--which Republican
White House candidates used (with the notable exception of
Ron Paul) as a saber-rattling opportunity during a
nationally-televised debate--was later discredited as a
virtual fabrication.

BIOPLASTICS AREN'T WHAT THEY'RE
MEANT TO BE

GUARDIAN, UKThe worldwide effort by
supermarkets and industry to replace conventional oil-based
plastic with eco-friendly bioplastics made from plants is
causing environmental problems and consumer confusion,
according to a Guardian study. The substitutes can increase
emissions of greenhouse gases on landfill sites, some need
high temperatures to decompose and others cannot be recycled
in Britain.

Many of the bioplastics are also contributing
to the global food crisis by taking over large areas of land
previously used to grow crops for human consumption.

The
market for bioplastics, which are made from maize,
sugarcane, wheat and other crops, is growing by 20-30% a
year.

The industry, which uses words such as
"sustainable", "biodegradeable", "compostable" and
"recyclable" to describe its products, says bioplastics make
carbon savings of 30-80% compared with conventional
oil-based plastics and can extend the shelf-life of
food.

Concern centers on corn-based packaging made with
polylactic acid. Made from GM crops, it looks identical to
conventional polyethylene terephthalate plastic and is
produced by US company NatureWorks. The company is jointly
owned by Cargill, the world's second largest biofuel
producer, and Teijin, one of the world's largest plastic
manufacturers.

Pla is used by some of the biggest
supermarkets and food companies, including Wal-Mart,
McDonald's and Del Monte. It is used by Marks & Spencer to
package organic foods, salads, snacks, desserts, and fruit
and vegetables. . .

While Pla is said to offer more
disposal options, the Guardian has found that it will barely
break down on landfill sites, and can only be composted in
the handful of anaerobic digesters which exist in Britain,
but which do not take any packaging. In addition, if Pla is
sent to UK recycling works in large quantities, it can
contaminate the waste stream, reportedly making other
recycled plastics unsaleable.

Anson, one of Britain's
largest suppliers of plastic food packaging, switched back
to conventional plastic after testing Pla in sandwich
packs. Sainsbury's has decided not to use it, saying Pla is
made with GM corn. "No local authority is collecting
compostable packaging at the moment. Composters do not want
it," a spokesman said.

FREE THINKING SOLDIER SUES ARMY
OVER THREATS

NY TIMESWhen Specialist Jeremy Hall
held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at
Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an
officer attending. But minutes into the talk, the officer,
Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and
another soldier about atheism, Specialist Hall wrote in a
sworn statement. "People like you are not holding up the
Constitution and are going against what the founding
fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!" Major
Welborn said, according to the statement.

Major Welborn
told the soldiers he might bar them from re-enlistment and
bring charges against them, according to the
statement.

Last month, Specialist Hall and the Military
Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group, filed suit
in federal court in Kansas, alleging that Specialist Hall's
right to be free from state endorsement of religion under
the First Amendment had been violated and that he had faced
retaliation for his views. In November, he was sent home
early from Iraq because of threats from fellow
soldiers.

Eileen Lainez, a spokeswoman for the Defense
Department, declined to comment on the case, saying, "The
department does not discuss pending
litigation."

Specialist Hall's lawsuit is the latest
incident to raise questions about the military's religion
guidelines. In 2005, the Air Force issued new regulations in
response to complaints from cadets at the Air Force Academy
that evangelical Christian officers used their positions to
proselytize. . .

At the July meeting, Major Welborn told
the soldiers they had disgraced those who had died for the
Constitution, Specialist Hall said. When he finished, Major
Welborn said, according to the statement: "I love you guys;
I just want the best for you. One day you will see the truth
and know what I mean."

Major Welborn declined to comment
beyond saying, "I'd love to tell my side of the story
because it's such a false story."

But Timothy Feary, the
other soldier at the meeting, said in an e-mail message:
"Jeremy is telling the truth. I was there and witnessed
everything."

Mikey Weinstein, a retired Air Force judge
advocate general and founder of the Military Religious
Freedom Foundation, said . . . he has been contacted by more
than 5,500 service members and, occasionally, military
families about incidents of religious discrimination. . .

Complaints include prayers "in Jesus' name" at mandatory
functions, which violates military regulations, and officers
proselytizing subordinates to be "born again." . . .
"Religion is inextricably intertwined with their jobs," Mr.
Weinstein said. "You're promoted by who you pray
with."

Though with a different unit now at Fort Riley,
Specialist Hall said the backlash had continued. He has a
no-contact order with a sergeant who, without provocation,
threatened to "bust him in the mouth." Another sergeant
allegedly told Specialist Hall that as an atheist, he was
not entitled to religious freedom because he had no
religion.

FREEDOM BEAT

HEY, IT WORKED
FOR HITLER

FOX NEWS, MA - Springfield's men in
black are returning. The city's new police commissioner,
William Fitchet, says members of the department's Street
Crime Unit will again don black, military-style uniforms as
part of his strategy to deal with youth violence. Fitchet's
predecessor, Edward Flynn, had ditched the black attire as
part of an effort to soften the image of the unit. Flynn
left Springfield in January to become the police chief in
Milwaukee. Sgt. John Delaney told a city council hearing
Wednesday that the stark uniforms send a message to
criminals that officers are serious about making arrests.
Delaney said a sense of "fear" has been missing for the past
few years.

DON'T CRY FOR ME,
ARKANSAS

Nostalgic moments from the Clinton
years

NEWSMAX, 1999 Arkansas Governor
Mike Huckabee has commuted Sharlene Wilson's 31-year
sentence after she served most of the Clinton administration
in jail for having delivered small quantities of drugs. In
1994 Wilson described Clinton's alleged cocaine use to the
London Sunday Telegraph. The prosecutor who sent her to jail
was her ex-boyfriend Dan Harmon, who later ended up in
prison himself on drug, racketeering, and extortion charges.
Here's what the Telegraph's Ambrose Evans Pritchard has
written about Wilson:

She told The Sunday Telegraph that
she had supplied Bill Clinton with cocaine during his first
term as Governor. "Bill was so messed up that night, he slid
down the wall into a garbage can," she said. The story has
credibility because she told it under oath to a federal
grand jury in Little Rock in December 1990. At the time she
was an informant for the Seventh Judicial District drug task
force in Arkansas. Jean Duffey, the prosecutor in charge of
the task force, talked to Wilson days after her grand jury
appearance. "She was terrified. She said her house was being
watched and she'd made a big mistake," said Duffey. "That
was when she told me she'd testified about seeing Bill
Clinton get so high on cocaine he fell into a garbage can .
. . I have no doubt that she was telling the truth." Shortly
after Wilson's testimony the drug task force was closed
down.

Duffey was hounded out of her job and now lives at
a secret address in Texas. Wilson was charged with drug
violations. In 1992 she was sentenced to 31 years for
selling half an ounce of marijuana and $100 worth of
methamphetamine to an informant . . . With the help of a
brilliant Arkansas lawyer, John Wesley Hall, her case went
all the way to the US Supreme Court. Finding a violation of
her constitutional rights, the court ordered the state of
Arkansas to give Wilson a fresh trial or set her free.
ECOLOGY

ECOLOGY CONCERNS DRAW
ATTENTION TO FOOD SHIPPING TRADITIONS

ELISABETH ROSENTHAL, NY TIMESCod
caught off Norway is shipped to China to be turned into
filets, then shipped back to Norway for sale. Argentine
lemons fill supermarket shelves on the Citrus Coast of
Spain, as local lemons rot on the ground. Half of Europe's
peas are grown and packaged in Kenya. . .

Food has moved
around the world since Europeans brought tea from China, but
never at the speed or in the amounts it has over the last
few years. .

Increasingly efficient global transport
networks make it practical to bring food before it spoils
from distant places where labor costs are lower. . .

But
the movable feast comes at a cost: pollution - especially
carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas - from
transporting the food.

Under longstanding trade
agreements, fuel for international freight carried by sea
and air is not taxed. Now, many economists, environmental
advocates and politicians say it is time to make shippers
and shoppers pay for the pollution, through taxes or other
measures.

"We're shifting goods around the world in a way
that looks really bizarre," said Paul Watkiss, an Oxford
University economist who wrote a recent European Union
report on food imports.

He noted that Britain, for
example, imports - and exports - 15,000 tons of waffles a
year, and similarly exchanges 20 tons of bottled water with
Australia. More important, Mr. Watkiss said, "we are not
paying the environmental cost of all that travel."

Europe
is poised to change that. This year the European Commission
in Brussels announced that all freight-carrying flights into
and out of the European Union would be included in the
trading bloc's emissions-trading program by 2012, meaning
permits will have to be purchased for the pollution they
generate.

RECOVERED HISTORY

DIANA'S DEATH

DOMINICK DUNNE, VANITY FAIR - The
more I hear and read and think about Diana's and Dodi's
deaths in the Pont d'Alma tunnel, in Paris, on August 31,
1997, in what is possibly the world's most famous car crash,
the more I doubt the truth of their great romance. If it was
anything at all, it was a flirt, a fling, "just one of those
things," as Cole Porter once wrote. Like the conspiracy
theory surrounding their deaths, their romance, too, was
orchestrated by Mohamed Al Fayed. The shrine to the eternal
love of Dodi and Diana, in Harrods, the most famous of
English department stores, owned by Al Fayed, is a popular
tourist attraction. People line up to look at it. They speak
in whispers, as if they were in church, instead of next to
the Egyptian escalator in the basement of the store. . .
They had been romantically involved with each other for less
than a month. . .

Several friends of Diana's told me she
was downhearted after the breakup of her romance with Hasnat
Khan, the Pakistani surgeon, with whom she was still in
love. They say Khan ended his serious relationship with
Diana because, as a respected doctor, he could not stand the
publicity that overwhelmed her life. (He told the inquest
that Diana had broken up with him after she became involved
with Dodi.) What is rarely mentioned, although it is well
known, is the existence of a beautiful American model named
Kelly Fisher, who wore on her left hand an enormous and very
expensive engagement ring. She says her fiancé had bought
her a mansion in Malibu, where they would live after their
marriage. She had tentatively set the date of August 9,
1997, for the wedding, nearly a month off. Her fiancé was
Dodi Al Fayed. The two were in Paris together on July 14,
when Dodi was summoned by his father to join Princess Diana
on the Jonikal, the yacht Mohamed Al Fayed had reportedly
purchased for $20 million the day after the Princess
accepted his invitation for a sailing trip with her sons,
William and Harry. Kelly was left behind in Paris, though a
few days later she was flown to St. Tropez and transported
to another Al Fayed yacht. There she languished during the
day while waiting for evening visits from Dodi.

Diana
returned to the Jonikal in August. The fact that she came
back for a second visit so soon really shows her loneliness
more than it does a passion for Dodi. Her two sons were at
Balmoral, one of the Queen's castles, with their father,
Prince Charles, and their grandparents the Queen and Prince
Philip, as was their August habit. Diana wasn't being
invited around to the great English estates for long
weekends. She had become too famous. It was too difficult to
have her stay. Strangers gathered at the gates to get a
glimpse of her. Helicopters hovered. She really had no place
to go. The Jonikal invitations were perfect. A splendid
yacht. A helicopter. A private plane. Guards to keep the
paparazzi at bay. She probably knew that she was being used
by a social climber for his and his son's advancement in
London society, but in high society it was a fair deal. Each
benefited. However, I think it is safe to say that Diana
didn't know that Kelly Fisher was on another family yacht,
waiting for furtive visits from Dodi, with whom she had been
in a relationship for nearly a year. Diana had already
played that scene in her marriage to Prince Charles. The
guards assigned to Dodi and Diana by Mohamed Al Fayed must
have known about Kelly. . .

On August 10, 1997, the
paparazzi snapshot that became known as "The Kiss" appeared
in the Sunday Mirror. The picture left no doubt that Dodi
and Diana were romantically involved. Kelly was toast. She
must have known that she was no match for the Princess of
Wales, and she hotfooted it back to Hollywood, where she
immediately hired the well-known Los Angeles attorney Gloria
Allred to file a breach-of-contract suit against Dodi. . .
Gloria has written a soon-to-be-released book about her
cases, entitled Fight Back and Win, which includes Kelly's
lawsuit. As Allred writes, Kelly was standing there next to
her, but she was too overcome with sadness and tears to
speak: "Ms. Fisher is emotionally devastated and traumatized
by Mr. Fayed's mistreatment of her. She is unable to speak
to the press today because she breaks down in tears whenever
she begins to relive what she has personally suffered."
There's no question that they thought they had the case of
the year, and that the sympathy and spotlight would shift to
Kelly as the wronged woman. . .

Kelly even offered to
meet with the Princess of Wales to tell her what Dodi was
really like. The Princess did not reply to the invitation.
And then, days later, the lovers were killed in the Alma
tunnel. Kelly did the proper thing and withdrew her
breach-of-contract lawsuit.BOOKSHELF

HOTEL: AN AMERICAN HISTORY

KERRY HOWLEY, REASONFor the women
of the mid-19th century, a fine hotel was a perilous place
to be. Not only did respectable gentlewomen run the risk of
consorting with prostitutes (a popular book of etiquette
advised female travelers to keep a safe distance from any
broad with "a meretricious expression of eye"), but extended
time away from the joys of cooking and cleaning might ruin
them for life. One defender of home and hearth described the
lady hotel dweller this way: "Idle and lazy, and dyspeptic
from the want of exercise, she becomes such a mere puppet
and machine that she loses all sense of individual
responsibility."

Even if she managed to avoid the whores
and dyspepsia, she ran great risk of seduction, possibly by
a traveling salesman. And if she contrived to keep her
virginity intact, there was always luggage to lose. The
detective Allan Pinkerton declared that there was "no more
prevalent or more popular branch of dishonesty" than the
robbery of inns.

Did hotels really merit such expansive
social anxieties? In Hotel: An American History (Yale
University Press), the University of New Mexico historian
A.K. Sandoval-Strausz responds with an emphatic yes. Hotels,
he argues, were "a significant episode in the modern idea of
a pluralistic, cosmopolitan society," and conservatives
invested in the status quo were right to fear them.
Transportation advances granted people a new mobility, and
traveling Americans suddenly required social mores not
predicated on years of shared community bonds.

Consider
the condition of the stranger in mid-18th-century America.
"Public authority," writes Sandoval-Strausz, "was deeply
invested in policing people's comings and goings."
Innkeepers were often required to notify officials when
strangers rolled into town, and transients needed official
permission to stay for any length of time. In 1765 Boston
hired a municipal bouncer of sorts to hunt down unauthorized
visitors and send them packing. . .

In contrast to the
humble taverns they replaced, early hotels were sweeping
architectural statements. As plans for the country's first
hotel were revealed in 1793, one journalist declared that
D.C.'s Union Public House would be "the most magnificent
building in America, perhaps in any other country." A year
later, construction began on New York's City Hotel, which
would feature a ballroom, stores, and the largest
circulating library in the nation. Not to be outdone, Boston
responded with the Exchange Coffee House, a 200-room
building that may have been the nation's largest structure
at the time. Alas, the Exchange was not to last: When a fire
broke out in the building's attic in 1818, there were no
ladders in the city tall enough to reach the
flames.

Hotels, then and now, are a material manifestation
of a world that prizes free mobility and peaceful exchange.
"The built environment expresses the values of the people
that created it," writes Sandoval-Strausz. In a time when
America is spending billions to build a wall along its
southern border, this brilliant history is a reminder that
the fear of the traveling stranger is something we have
overcome before.

This article, which
appeared a year ago in the Washington Post Magazine, just
won a Pulitzer Prize for Weingarten

GENE WEINGARTEN WASHINGTON POST - By
most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in
jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals
baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin.
Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a
few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to
face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.

It was 7:51
a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush
hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six
classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them
were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of
them, a government job. L'Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of
federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level
bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles:
policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist,
facilitator, consultant. . .

A onetime child prodigy, at
39 Joshua Bell has arrived as an internationally acclaimed
virtuoso. Three days before he appeared at the Metro
station, Bell had filled the house at Boston's stately
Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100.
Two weeks later, at the Music Center at Strathmore, in North
Bethesda, he would play to a standing-room-only audience so
respectful of his artistry that they stifled their coughs
until the silence between movements. But on that Friday in
January, Joshua Bell was just another mendicant, competing
for the attention of busy people on their way to work. . .

Bell's been accepting over-the-top accolades since
puberty: Interview magazine once said his playing "does
nothing less than tell human beings why they bother to
live." He's learned to field these things graciously, with a
bashful duck of the head and a modified "pshaw." For this
incognito performance, Bell had only one condition for
participating. The event had been described to him as a test
of whether, in an incongruous context, ordinary people would
recognize genius. His condition: "I'm not comfortable if you
call this genius." "Genius" is an overused word, he said: It
can be applied to some of the composers whose work he plays,
but not to him. His skills are largely interpretive, he
said, and to imply otherwise would be unseemly and
inaccurate. It was an interesting request, and under the
circumstances, one that will be honored. The word will not
again appear in this article.

BREVITAS

In 2007, a whopping 400,000 books
were published or distributed in the United States, up from
300,000 in 2006, according to the industry tracker Bowker,
which attributed the sharp rise to the number of
print-on-demand books and reprints of out-of-print titles.
University writing programs are thriving, while writers'
conferences abound, offering aspiring authors a chance to
network and "workshop" their work. The blog tracker
Technorati estimates that 175,000 new blogs are created
worldwide each day . . . And the same N.E.A. study found
that 7 percent of adults polled, or 15 million people, did
creative writing, mostly "for personal fulfillment.". . .
IUniverse, a self-publishing company founded in 1999, has
grown 30 percent a year in recent years; it now produces 500
titles a month and has 36,000 titles in print, said Susan
Driscoll, a vice president of its parent company, Author
Solutions. . . Driscoll said that most writers using
iUniverse sell fewer than 200 books. Other self-publishing
outfits report similar growth. Xlibris, a print-on-demand
operation, has 20,000 titles in print, by more than 18,000
authors, said Noel Flowers, a company spokesman. - Rachel
Donadio, NY Times

Peter Swire, RINF In a
recent briefing with Canadian press [Michael] Chertoff made
the startling statement that fingerprints are "not
particularly private": QUESTION: Some are raising that the
privacy aspects of this thing, you know, sharing of that
kind of data, very personal data, among four countries is
quite a scary thing. . . SECRETARY CHERTOFF: Well, first of
all, a fingerprint is hardly personal data because you leave
it on glasses and silverware and articles all over the
world, they're like footprints. They're not particularly
private

ACLUConsidering that 89 percent of
the mind-boggling 829,625 people arrested for marijuana law
offenses in 2006 - the most recent year for which data is
available - were arrested for mere possession, the
bi-partisan "Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults
Act of 2008" would go a long way toward increasing public
safety by freeing up our federal law enforcement resources
to focus on serious, violent crime. Taxpayers are stuck with
the multibillion dollar bill for these hundreds of thousands
of marijuana arrests, which consume 4.5 million law
enforcement hours - the equivalent of taking 112,500 law
enforcement officers off the streets. . . According to a
2001 Zogby poll, 61 percent of Americans oppose arresting
and jailing nonviolent marijuana users, while a 2002
Time/CNN poll found that 72 percent of Americans think
people arrested for marijuana possession should face fines
rather than jail time. Yet, legislators remain under the
impression that support for marijuana law reform would brand
them with a stigma as soft-on-crime. That's a shame for the
three-quarters of a million small-time marijuana offenders
who this year will be branded with the stigma of arrest,
leading to employment discrimination, loss of financial aid
for college and other public assistance, loss of child
custody, and oftentimes imprisonment.

MSNBC -The new U.S. Embassy complex
does not have enough fortified living quarters for hundreds
of diplomats and other workers, who must remain temporarily
in trailers without special rooftop protection against
mortars and rockets, government officials have told The
Associated Press. Sorting out the housing crunch and funding
could further delay moving all personnel into the compound
until next year and exposes shortcomings in the planning for
America's more than $700 million diplomatic hub in Iraq. . .
At one point - during the heaviest barrages early this month
- the State Department ordered all its Baghdad employees to
wear body armor and other protective gear while outside
buildings in the Green Zone, which also contains the British
Embassy, key Iraqi government offices and other
international compounds. Staffers also were ordered not to
sleep in their trailers, and hundreds of cots were placed
inside the current embassy - a former Saddam Hussein
palace.. . . The precise figure for the looming housing
shortfall was not disclosed. Currently, the trailers behind
the embassy hold more than 1,000 people

Another diplomatic incident
threatens to taint U.S.-Israeli relations: The American
government has recently demanded Israel clarify how five
U.S.-made helicopters sold to Israel in the mid-70s found
their way into the hands of a Columbian drug cartel.
According to American sources, the military copters
currently serve the drug mafia in the South American
country. . . The ministry permitted the choppers, of a MD
500 Defender model, be sold either to the Mexican federal
police, or to the Spain firefighters department. However,
contrary to the terms of the license, the copters ended up
in Columbia, by way of Canadian mediators. - Ynet,
Israel

Sen. Barack Obama does come from the
Chicago school of politics, where historically voter turnout
has been unusually high for residents of certain graveyards.
And he has been unusually successful raising money. Now he's
raising money by raising the dead. The Times' campaign
finance writer Dan Morain found Obama campaign records
reporting a $50 donation by Roy Scheider, who lists his
occupation as actor and his home as Sag Harbor, N.Y.
Remember him from many great movies, including "The French
Connection" and "Jaws," and the immortal line "You're gonna
need a bigger boat"? According to campaign records, Scheider
made the donation March 10. Trouble is, Scheider died
exactly one month before that, on Feb. 10, at age 75. Just
another example of Hollywood's undying affection for
Democrats. - LA TimesSan Diego officials say they're going to
fight security contractor Blackwater Worldwide's
permit to build an indoor military training facility in the
city. . . Blackwater's permit was obtained by Raven
Development Group. Southwest Law Enforcement's name is on
the design plan that the city reviewed. Bonfiglio said the
company has never sought to hide its affiliation with those
businesses. . . Blackwater officials in March abandoned the
company's plans to build an 824-acre training center in
Potrero, a rural community about 40 miles east of downtown
San Diego. Blackwater's plans there sparked intense
opposition from critics who said the facility would bring
noise and traffic to the quiet community. The company
dropped its proposal after noise tests showed that the noise
from gunfire exceeded county standards. - San Diego
Mercury News

Drug and medical device companies
should be banned from offering free food, gifts, travel and
ghost-writing services to doctors, staff members and
students in all 129 of the nation's medical colleges, an
influential college association has concluded. The proposed
ban is the result of a two-year effort by the group, the
Association of American Medical Colleges, to create a model
policy governing interactions between the schools and
industry. While schools can ignore the association's advice,
most follow its recommendations. - NY Times

The [Arizona] Maricopa County Board
of Supervisors this week agreed to pay out $925,000 to
settle two cases that involved the Sheriff's Office. One
was a wrongful-death claim brought by the family of a
28-year-old man who suffered a heart attack while in
custody. The Sheriff's Office and the Correctional Health
Services, a county department responsible for giving inmates
medical care, split the $800,000 settlement equally. On the
heels of that settlement, Phoenix attorney Michael Manning
dispatched a six-page letter to the U.S. Department of
Justice, asking that Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his deputies be
investigated for abusing the civil rights of inmates housed
in county facilities. . . His letter cites cases stretching
from a January verdict that awarded $2 million to the family
of Brian Crenshaw, a disabled man who died after a fight
with a detention officer, to the 1996 case of Scott Norberg,
whose family settled for $8.25 million after Norberg died in
a restraint chair at the jail. . . Arpaio was defiant in the
face of another request for federal authorities to inspect
his methods. The letter was the third in three weeks,
following missives to the Justice Department from Phoenix
Mayor Phil Gordon and the Anti-Defamation League, and came
on the same day the state's Legislative Latino Caucus
drafted a letter requesting U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy
Pelosi hold hearings to look into potential civil-rights
violations. - Arizona Central

A thief has struck four times Four
times in the last two weeks he has struck at Frank Fahy's
vegetable patch. On each occasion he has cut through
protective netting and pinched a single head of broccoli.
The serial thieving is driving Mr Fahy, a 71-year-old
retired professor, to distraction - not least because his
efforts to deter the culprit have been fruitless. . . 'Each
time one head was taken. They are each worth about 50p. It
is a bit distressing.' After the first theft Mr Fahy put up
a notice saying 'smile you are on camera' - but within three
days the thief struck for the second time. Then he put up a
notice saying he had sprayed some of his 30-strong crop with
insecticide - but still the thefts continued. Now he has put
up a notice by his allotment warning the burglar that police
are investigating. . . Parish council chairman David Bidwell
said: 'It is hard to know exactly when they may strike
again. 'But one would hope somebody carrying several large
heads of broccoli would be noticeable in a place like King's
Somborne, where there is not much crime.' - Daily Mail,
UK

The Voter ID conclusion reached by
the Supreme Court as a whole is that the law may be
unconstitutional as applied to a small number of voters who
must incur cost in order to obtain the ID, but that since
this case has no such voters as plaintiffs, it fails to
reach that claim. Another lawsuit with that particular type
of voter as a plaintiff may reach it in the future. -
Ballot Access News

Jurgen Vsych, who has
been Ralph Nader's campaign filmmaker, has written a
biography the independent candidate, What Was
Ralph Nader Thinking? - now available in paperback,
hardback or audiobooks.

THE SWAMPOODLE REPORT

Great moments in Wikipedia: "Pleasantville has a
long and rich history going back to the days of the original
inhabitants. . . "

Michael Feldman reports that
Barack Obama claims to be only a high holiday
Congregationalist.

According to the Washington
Times, Dennis Hof, owner of the Bunny Ranch - the
largest legally operated house of prostitution in the nation
and now in its third season of being featured on HBO -
attended the White House Correspondents' Association
dinner. "Mr. Hof told us that during the dinner 'I spotted
several of my customers,' two of whom emailed him this
morning and 'thanked me for not walking up to them to say
hello.'"

READER COMMENTS

NOTE: You can
post your comments on any of the above stories by going to
our Undernews site and searching for the headline. Once
posted, a copy is immediately mailed to the Review and we
pick some of the most interesting to publish here. http://prorev.com/indexa.htm

HILLARY
CLINTON

- Get this divisive, bitter campaigner
out of the race. Please. She is taking us down the same
old path of politics. And this country deserves
better.

OBAMA

- If I considered myself a
religious person (I don't), if I owned a gun and was a
hunter (I don't and I'm not), if I like to be around my own
friends and family and coworkers who I love and respect and
also speak the same language as I do (I do), then why in the
world would I vote for someone who claims I'm clinging to my
religion and church and guns and people like me because I am
bitter. . . I found this terribly insulting, and I don't
even live in Pennslvania - BB Fellows Minneapolis, MN

- Am
I crazy to enjoy Jeremiah Wright's straight talk immensely?
Further, I find he grows on one. I got a kick of seeing Fox
News broadcast his NAACP talk, probably chortling over
wrecking Obama with guilt by association. I hope they keep
it up and predict in time Wright will be seen for what he is
- a spellbinding orator who resonates broadly with most of
us. I want more, especially on Fox. Maybe Fox's well-paid
token blacks will lead a palace revolution. Finally, compare
the white talking heads clucking over Wright while their
coverage of ex-Nazi youth Ratzinger just oozed unction and
reverential tones, enough to make the toughest stomach
retch. - WH, ME

- Standardized tests are
the best measure we presently have for holding teachers
accountable for what they are or are not teaching. The
argument that "there are better things for teachers to spend
their time on than standardized testing" is completely
ridiculous, as a typical testing cycle takes 3-4 days (out
of 180 in Indiana). Most kids miss around 5 days of school a
year, so the thought that it's a strain on teachers is
completely invalid.

Was this teacher on the state board
that approved this test? Did he attend the meetings that
helped set the criteria for the test? I seriously doubt it.
If he had, then more than likely it would have been
mentioned in the article to help glorify this guy. So before
you label him as a "hero" for doing something popular,
think.

The state sets standards to teach, then does its
best to measure how well each school is imparting these
standards onto the students. I hate standardized testing,
but it's what we have, so it's what we have to live with for
now until someone comes up with a better idea. Yes, it's not
fair to some, but to the other 95% of kids, it's a fairly
accurate measure of what they know. I see around 275 kids
each day, and I have access to their test scores for our
state's standardized test. There was only 2 or 3 whom failed
the test that surprised me. Is it sad that those kids are
being unfairly judged based off of some bubble test? Yes,
it's awful. What else are we supposed to do? Once you stop
holding teachers and kids accountable for their work, people
become complacent and stop working as hard and/or stop
caring.

I teach at a school where most of the teachers
are 40+, which is fine, but most of them are burnt out and
very lazy and, oddly enough, our test scores are quite low.
I did my student teaching at a school where the teachers
were very active and came up with extra programs, made kids
who were struggling stay after, spent extra time, et cetera,
and oddly enough their test scores are pretty high.
Coincidence?

How about - instead of complaining about
standardized tests - you come up with an adequate
replacement for it?

Nothing is more ridiculous than
someone complaining about a problem, yet offering no
solution to it. Now, if you have a good, realistic solution
to testing, let's hear it. Nothing annoys me more than
senseless whining. It serves no purpose.

- I am a retired
6th grade teacher. I retired just before this testing
madness became a reality. I would have been proud to have
worked with Mr. Chew, he is a credit to the word
education. Many times I have said that I would not
have been able to teach with the current testing
regulations, children need and must have the creative side
of them expressed in order to survive and flourish.

- This
isn't something that is just going on in Washington. Most
states have a horrible standardized test that teachers must
teach to. The pressure put on us and the students (I am a
teacher myself) is insane. To the person who claimed Mr.
Chew was "whining" - walk a day in a teacher's shoes and see
what we deal with on a daily basis.

- If you are a teacher
or belong to one of the major teacher unions, you must
contact your union at the local, state, and national level
and tell them to stop supporting or only half-heartedly
opposing No Child Left Behind. They should unequivocally
oppose any Republican education policies since they
invariably serve two purposes:

1. funneling money into
the pockets of cronies, in this case testing companies.

2.
making public education look like a failure, in this case by
wasting teachers and students time preparing for the test,
then using the test results to prove public schools are
failing.

IT'S 3 A.M. AND HILLARY CLINTON STILL HASN'T
GONE HOME YET

- We have the candidate and we
have the president. There's a difference. We can't know what
Obama will do as president until he's elected. Being a
candidate, meanwhile, is treading a minefield. Nerve
wracking, wondering if you're going to say the wrong thing.
Gotta please the funders, gotta please the voters. The
agonizing thing is that what the voters want is often what
the funders fear. What we really need is a New Deal, but
how are we going to be able to afford it? This primary
phase feels like a long, long boxing match, and the
contenders are on the ropes. If he gets too specific, then
he hems himself in to promises that might not seem
appropriate a year from now.

- True
enough, re. your comments about Obama's mom not being
mentioned as white and that the media posits him as 'black'
solely. But let's be honest: blacks also tend to co-opt in
that fashion. For example, many blacks claim Tiger Woods as
a 'black man', conveniently forgetting or omitting the fact
that his parentage is in fact multi-racial. This nonsense
cuts across almost all fronts nowadays.

- Standardized
tests are mind controlled programming. They signify nothing,
and teach nothing. That is why public school is a joke. Take
your test and shove it.

- You want a replacement for your
standardized test? How about teaching academic topics? How
about tests that measure and teach?

- Outstanding
commentary, Sam. After about ten years of travels through
what passes for the American Left, the severest indictment
is the fact that I rarely heard your name.

- What I see on
the outside of two boxes is (a) a candidate willing to
"obliterate" a country, (b) a candidate willing to keep us
at war for 100 years, and (c) a candidate who says we have
to change this mindset. I agree with candidate (c). ( of
course they may be "just words" that don't matter.) But,
those are my realistic choices. Keep in mind also, that we
have "Black History" one month out of the year. So, Tiger
Woods, and Barack Obama, as living history, may be as close
as a lot of kids get. It sure isn't in the grade school
curriculum.

- Diana Spencer died in a stupid and avoidable accident,
and that's sad--but this thing needed to be put to bed a
long time ago, and would have been if it weren't for the
continual, artificially-stimulated-by-the-mainstream-media
appetites for 'news' about the rich, the decadent, the
Eurotrash jet-set crowd, and celebrities famous for nothing
more noteworthy than creating homemade porn on their cell
phones. If anyone is truly interested in investigating a
conspiracy, they'd put their energies to better use by
investigating the conspiracy among news outlets to keep the
public ignorant of stories and facts germane to their real
existences, interests and needs, as opposed to brain popcorn
centering around the latest dubious achievers of the moment.
That would make for a truly worthy piece of investigative
journalism, in contradistinction to the 'investigations' of
a non-existent cabal surrounding a vacuous young woman's
unfortunate but accidental death. And I'm not holding my
breath waiting to ever see it in print, either, sorry to
say.

Dunne was dispelling the theories about Diana's
death, not encouraging them.

WORD

- Meetings are nowhere near as useful as masturbation.
They are rather torture for masochists and punishment for
those who have misbehaved

- The
progressive instincts of Democrats clash with their
policies. For instance, Democrats for years said that people
in the US ought to pay more for gas like those Europeans.
However high gas prices have a regressive impact, so they
hurt the low income people the
most.

This is an opportunity for you as one of the 4 million potential funders and recipients of a Universal Basic Income to collectively consider the issue:1. Is UBI is a desirable policy for New Zealand; and2. How should a UBI system work in practice. More>>

The National party has announced its youth justice policy, which includes a controversial plan for recidivist serious youth offenders to be hit over the head with a comically large rubber mallet. More>>

ALSO:

It's been brought to my attention that Labour's new campaign slogan is "Let's do this". A collective call to action. A mission. I myself was halfway out of the couch before I realised I wasn't sure what it was I was supposed to do. More>>

ALSO:

Ordinary citizens have had very few venues where they can debate and discuss as to what they believe has led to the crisis in affordable housing and how we might begin to address this. The HiveMind on affordable housing was about redressing the balance. More>>

ALSO:

This is an opportunity for you as one of the 4 million guardians of our common water resources to help us find mutually agreeable solutions to the critical task of collectively managing these resources for health and sustainability. More>>